Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Adelaide & South Australia (Regional Guide)

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4 star:		(2)
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2 star:		(2)
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There's a lot to do in South Australia: so much that it deserves a book of its own separate from just a generic travel guide to the entire country - and Adelaide & South Australia serves just this purpose, allowing the visitor to focus on the region's many offerings. Excellent small maps accompany clear descriptions of accommodations, eating, sightseeing, and natural wonders. With its information-packed pages, it's a 'must' for any destination-oriented traveler planning a visit to the region; especially for those seeking more depth than the usual Australia-wide coverage can offer.

Unfortunatly, this is perhaps the only book widely available in the US specifically on Southern Australia, which has many wonderful opportunities for the nature and/or wine loving tourist. This book, however, is sorely outdated and in many instances just wrong. I am speaking specifically about the portions written on Kangaroo Island and the south coast. From my experience thus far it seems likely that the author never even visited these places, but is simply working off of word of mouth and other "primary" sources. I generally swear by Lonely Planet guides, but this one is an exception. I hope Lonley Planet puts out a new edition soon with a new author.

The idea of driving from Adelaide, in South Australia, right 'up the guts' of the Australian continent through to Darwin in the Northern Territory is a pretty nifty one. I've been lucky enough to do exactly that spread over two different trips - the southern half with a tour group and the second as a father & son road trip around a year ago. As such I can attest that this guide book to Central Australia is quite useful as a primer and does discuss a great many point of interest in a fairly factual style. One reviewer decried the lack of accuracy regarding parts of South Australia and in particular Kangaroo Island but I cannot comment on that as I've not been to KI since around 2003.

Much of the format of this work follows the basic LP layout so you shouldn't have any dramas finding what you want. Also the way the book follows in chronological order a one way trip through the centre of the country makes it an easily digestible work. A clutch of photographs at the start of the book add a touch of colour and all I up feel that this book - or any updated version when they get around to it - would make a good companion for anybody considering such a journey. Along with detailed road maps of course and hey, do yourself a favour and DON'T rent a 4WD as just about all the roads you'll be driving on are bitumen (I see so many tourist paying high rental fees for these gas guzzlers when you are almost certain not to need one, and they are easily rented at places like Alice Springs if you ever really really want to go somewhere that 4WD is necessary).

So that's my two cents worth!

The Lonely Planet guide to Australia is the best and most complete I have yet seen. As with any travel guide they miss a lot, but for the areas I know, what they miss probably is not very important to many travelers. There does seem to be a very slight bias toward the college age backpacker traveler, but perhaps most folks my age are on package tours anyway. This one beats Frommer's hands down.

This is a thorough, well researched, detailed, well written guide to travel in the Northern Territory of Australia. It's loaded with valuable information, especially for people who want a bit of adventure and who travel with their minds fully engaged. Lonely Planet deserves special accolades for their emphasis on ethics and etiquette for foreign travelers.

I'm from South Australia, and I thought I'd pick this guide up because I'm researching my next holiday. The "South Australia" lonely planet from 1999 was pretty good, but a bit outdated, and this book is its replacement.

From the South Australian perspective (that's half of the area covered by this guide), this guide has a number of mistakes, and is incomplete.

Areas completely missed by the guide include the Yorke Peninsula, the Eyre Peninsula (including Port Lincoln and Whyalla), and the Great Australian Bight.

For a guide that is supposed to be specific to an area, these seem to be quite bad omissions. Especially Port Lincoln; one may argue that the other places aren't very touristic, but Port Lincoln is a fairly major tourist attraction, with Australia's largest fishing fleet, diving with sharks, etc...